Seemingly exclusive to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, there’s a new trailer of Might & Magic X: Legacy game footage below. The classic series returns after an eleven year hiatus, and the first act of it will be available to early-buyers on Monday. Yes, Monday! Blimey, that snuck up from nowhere.

Looking at the footage, it seems that last year’s Legend Of Grimrock really opened some doors. Tile-based RPGs felt like something you just weren’t allowed to do any more. Then some people did one, did it brilliantly, and everyone else has realised they can too. Ubisoft is amongst that number, reviving the meandering M&M series after it fell by the wayside following the really dreadful ninth edition. And gosh, look below (patiently waiting for the CGI guff to pass) – doesn’t that look rather good?

And because they want to make me like it even though I had to play IX, they’re throwing in a cloth map with the “Deluxe Box Edition” of a digital only game my brain hurts.

Head to the game’s site, and you can take part in “open development“, which I don’t pretend to have fathomed. I kind of liked it back when the developers did the developing, and then I did the playing afterward. I’m old-fashioned.

The whole thing is due out in September, despite only being revealed in March, and crikey, I’ve gone from not caring to wanting to play this. Good job, trailer-making-people.

I grew up on M&M 6/7/8, so the tile based movement feels a bit…confining. Especially something that looks to have (from E3 trailer) open outdoor environments. Something about having full party in the first person perspective vs the solo experience of Elder Scrolls in a free movement environment just does it better for me.

Atlus has been proving that tile-based RPGs can be done brilliantly with Etrian Odyssey 1-4 and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. Grimrock showed there is a PC audience out there.

I have very fond memories of M&M III, and both Xeens, as well as Wizardry VII. The later games in both series didn’t really click with me, but after Grimrock, I’m looking forward to more games in this style.

Being able to freely fly, water walk, climb down hills, climb up hills in areas that you were not supposed to, it was great. In a tile based system I can not create my own shortcuts nor plummet to my death when I take a misstep.

Ok, why is Grimrock not a real RPG? It has the same gameplay mechanics and all the same elements as Dungeon Master, which is universally recognized as being an RPG. The main difference between the two is that DM is skill based whereas Grimrock is class based. Is eye of the Beholder not an RPG? Or does it qualify because it had more NPCs. Or does nothing with real-time gameplay qualify as a real RPG? If that’s your opinion then you’re entitled to it but you’re at odds with almost everybody who has grown up playing computer RPGs since the 80s. When DM came out and blew everyone away, there were no arguments that it was not a proper RPG because it wasn’t turn based like Might and Magic or Ultima, and there were no arguments that all RPGs should become realtime. Wikipedia will tell you DM is an “action RPG” – try finding a review from 1988 that makes such a distinction for it http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-dungeon-master_21942.html you coming along (much) later and telling us a Grimrock style RPG is not a real RPG is frankly risible.

The fathers of the genre? Do you think the Spice Girls invented rock n roll? RPG existed before PC games started to jump on that shit and New World Computing were only one of many who were the first to do so. [Insert reference to shitty American TV programme to prove that I am culturally cancerous]

Define ‘real and actual RPG’ because to me that means paper role playing.

Btw Grimrock may not fit your definition of a ‘real and actual RPG’ but it’s still an RPG. No one appointed you the arbiter or what is or isn’t an RPG. To me you need stats, character sheet, and leveling and/or character progression and that’s about it.

True. I know some people define role playing as meaning you have to be playing a role, which to me is silly. You’re playing a role in Thief, or Mirrors Edge, while you’re not in System Shock 2, and yet SS2 is the only one of those that gets close to being an RPG since it has stats and character progression.

2. and are fertile,Humans and Elfs and Orcs are Races to each other ,while Dwarfs are a separate Species (no Halfdwarfs).But shouldnt there be a Orc-Elf Hybrid then? And what if Elf-Orcs are infertile?

This is the main problem I’ve had with Ubi since the mid 90s, they insist in developing their games, and everything else, in dead tongues like French and German and then doing shoddy translations into the modern human language ;)

PORTAL had portals. HALF-LIFE 2 had the gravity gun. But DARK MESSIAH’s megaboot may eclipse them all as the greatest game mechanic of all time.

Do you want to spend 5 minutes intricately attacking and blocking to defeat an enemy in sword combat? No? Not a problem, you can just MEGABOOT them off the nearest ledge – or into a curiously-placed vertical rack of spikes – in a second flat. Does it make logical sense? NO. But no-one cares, because MEGABOOT.

Sadly, I have not heard about future M&M games incorporating the MEGABOOT mechanic. A shame.

Is this really written by the same person who said ” the Might & Magic series became an increasingly terrible run of first-person RPGs, set in the blandly generic fantasy worlds, always somehow managing to feel about five years behind the rest of the industry.”? Now it’s a “classic series” that only “fell by the wayside following the really dreadful ninth edition.”

I did, and all it shows, apart from that tag line, is buying equipment and fighting in a tiled dungeon. There was no hint of any other kind of interaction.

I can accept that they’re just not showing that kind of footage at the moment, however, this kind of ‘advertising’ is very narrow and if it is an incomplete description of the game, then they are shooting themselves in the foot by putting people off it so early.

However I am inclined to think that my first impressions are correct, because all of the ‘community input’ being asked for is… dungeons and more dungeons… so…..

It’s the rendering of an outside area.. it doesn’t mean there is anything there to interact with apart from mobs, especially seeing as there is no hint of anything but fighting mobs.

If they have actually missed out the larger part of the game description then undoubtedly I’ll notice in the months to come…… but it’s VERY stupid to narrow the appeal of the game as they have done with this presentation.

OK, Infinitron, I see the screenshots.. but to me, all that says is that you can buy food, possibly just for health reasons and that you have some stats, but even LoG had stats, the ONE shining light seems to be perception, which unless it’s a intiative mechanic does seem to point to non combat abilities, however, I still don’t see any other evidence of questing and/or exploration, even all of the questions on the page you pointed me to are combat/ability based.. I didn’t see one question or answer (possibly I have missed it) pertaining to a larger interactive world.. The game even forces a 4 person team, that screams dungeon combat oriented game to me.

Well, RProxyOnly, if you’ve played Might & Magic: World of Xeen, the game this title is most inspired by, you should know not to expect some kind of grid-based Elder Scrolls with a fully simulated world.

Describing it as an “open world dungeon crawler” isn’t inaccurate. If that’s not your thing, well…

I get what he’s saying. For instance, everything you’ve said is also true of Skyrim, and almost everything in that game comes down to violence. For what it’s worth, I’m not at all opposed to a game where most of the gameplay is combat, but I prefer my RPGs to offer meaningful opportunities for non-combat experiences to flesh things out a bit. Even the Witcher 2, as combat-oriented as it was, understood that it was fun to be able to use spells in conversations, while New Vegas offered plenty of unavoidable gunplay while still presenting tons of non-combat approaches to situations.

What’s going on with the comments system here, I’ve tried to post the same thing about 10 times now, it hasn’t appeared once yet I’m not told it “looks like I already said that”… Does this mean my comment is in moderation? Or I’m not seeing the latest comments? Or it’s not letting me post? Very upsetting :(

The thing that bothers me about the tiled combat (particularly in LoG) is that it’s so easy to game.. When you can advance to hit then retreat to dodge.. in the SAME turn, then it reduces the gameplay to trivial.

Well if that’s the case, then I suppose that is one thing they’ve done correctly… True turn based.

I’m still concerned about the levels of other interactions through.. exploration and questing. I don’t want another combat centered, tile based hacky hacky, They were ok when open world wasn’t very practical, but tech has evolved from then.

LoG was a cute throw back to day of yore, but it wasn’t really a serious anything.

There’s been a LOT of info released, and RPS haven’t really been doing a good job covering it, to say the least. Though I can understand their skepticism, as this title really came out of fucking nowhere.

There is lust in my heart for this. After Grimrock, Dragon’s Crown, and XCOM, I’m beginning to believe that we’re seeing a trend of developers reviving and *gasp* improving (well…in some ways) genres that had been previously abandoned and left to rot. It’s like they’ve discovered some kind of videogame Lost World and are sending back missives.

So… I can’t tell, is this game confirmed to be turn based and not real time? Because the thing that annoyed me the most about Grimrock was that the fights became gamey gimmicks because they were real time.

I’m interested if it’s turn based, and not at all if it’s real time. Can anyone confirm one way or the other?

Jeez, when Ubisoft said that they would stop being dicks to PC gamers I never expected them to follow through on it!

Old school, turn based, dungeon crawler? You are alright Ubisoft, you are alright.

Now, you had me at Legend of Grimrock, but how do I go about acquiring this delightful morsel of old school PC gaming goodness? I’ve gone over the linked website left and right and don’t see a link to buy it nor the game on Steam…

This looks great, althought M&M rebootverse bothers me. It was bad and cliche in Heroes, it was bad and cliche in Clash of Heroes. And they told they have whole department for crappy cliche fantasy world.

I’ve gone from not knowing this exists to wanting it so bad it hurts in about a minute. I can’t believe a company like Ubisoft is making a dungeon crawler with turn-based combat! Even the indies behind Legend of Grimrock didn’t go turnbased. This is a strange wonderful world.

Because M&M is an Ubi franchise and because turn based was NEVER a feature of the gameplay in the tradition of games which inspired Grimrock, M&M was ALWAYS the turn based alternative the DM/EotB style being revived by Grimrock. I couldn’t be happier that we’re going to have both kinds of games around again but I would hate for a new Grimrock to be turn based because there are two completely separate traditions of RPG… The only thing they have in common is that they are grid based.

Was very interested in this right up to the point where I realized it’s likely to be a Uplay exclusive. After clogging up my poor PC with the EA (Origin) and the Ubisoft (UPlay) Steam-wannabe’s I decided to ditch any and all of my games that required either abomination and reverted to Steam. Thus far my computer is much happier. Not that it was a huge loss. I still prefer Far Cry 2 to the pretentious twaddle that was Far Cry 3 and none of the EA games I got rid of were that good either, but I digress… If this comes out on Steam I’ll be buying it (since DRM is still pretty much a given with the major developers) but they can forget it if it’s a UPlay exclusive. Pity. This looks much more interesting to me than most of the other so-called AAA games due out this year.

Not that it will dent their sales much obviously as I’m just one person. :P

Well if you count ALL of the people put off by the client (I’m another) and the ones who’ll just torrent it because of Uplay (because the crackers WILL remove the Uplay necessity), then whether or not they are willing to admit it, it will add up to quite a few pennies.

I don’t get that attitude. I mean if Origin isn’t running all it does it take up a little hard drive space. Even when it’s running it seems to have no effect on the responsiveness of other apps on my PC. Same with UPlay.

The hot stuff in MM was to face dozens of opponents, launch a meteor shower on them and see them ravaged by dozens too. How satisfying! Also, fighting titan so big you’d only see their feets at melee range (obviously outside). It’s entirely lacking in this trailer, so let’s hope it’s still there.

This looks way better than I expected (a shallow iOS focused game with little in the way of substance). Of course the jury is still out, it could still have shallow combat, lore and so on, but it’s certainly looking very promising. Maybe I will be able to set Wizardry 8 aside for a while and play something new.

YESSSS!! M&M II, III and IV (both parts) were lovely games, and the perfect turn-based cousins of dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. I’m very encouraged by this trailer.

M&M should be turn based and with the Grimrock franchise going strong in parallel we’ll have a proper resurgence of grid based RPGs now with options on both sides of the turn-based/realtime divide :)

IMO, complicated combat and outdoor exploration stuff works better turn-based. As do larger party sizes (4 is about right for realtime) whereas puzzles and dungeons work better in realtime (nobody has yet outdone the original Dungeon Master dungeon). People got very hung up on the combat in Grimrock but combat was never the main focus of realtime grid-based RPGs in the same way as it was in M&M.

Still very confused that actual fans of M&M 6,7,8 etc exist… Sorry :( M&M 6 departing from the grid-based style (and sucking in every respect as a consequence) made me lose all faith in the series and along with how terrible DM2 was, really did seem to kill grid based RPGs forever at the time.